Wednesday, 13 May 2015

This is a lovely idea - an opportunity to watch films in a slightly different way. There are some science or science fiction films and they'll be screened alongside discussions about the science within them, in Chelsea.

Pop Up Screens also do open air screenings, but these ones below are indoors.

Science Flicktion adds a unique scientific
insight into a series of films offered up by a super smart scientist and
a fairly smart comedian.

Watch a movie. Learn something.

it's going to be educational and awesome

A
quick reminder that is weekend we're going to answer all your questions
about the science in some brilliant movies. When I was a kid I wanted
to know why a terminator made of metal could move like liquid. When I
was 13 I had nightmares about face huggers. When I was 15 I wanted to
know what the problem was Houston. When I was 17 I wanted to know what
any of the maths was and then embarrassingly when
I was 20 I still wanted to know why zombies can't run... this weekend
all those questions will be answered and then at least 16 more. Want to
know how this is all going to work? First there'll be an introduction
to the film from a super smart scientist and a smartish comedian, then
the film will start and then at certain points in the movie we'll pause
it and explain what you're about to see or what you've just seen. You
WILL leave knowing something new.

Sunday, 10 May 2015

How to unsubscribe from receiving automated tweets from...
• paper.li - tweet @newscrier saying stop mentions. Ctrl+F-search for newscrierhere for more info.
• Commun.it- email info@commun.it asking to have your Twitter account added to their blacklist
• SumAll - I don't know, they're looking into it but claim they can't do it
• TweetJukebox - I don't know, they said they'd consider adding an opt-out function

This is a small grumpy rant. In the global scheme of things if this is all I/we have to worry me/us then we're not doing too badly. But honestly, I ask you - why are we OK with automated services spamming people with irrelevant tweets about interactions etc on Twitter?

Recently I and a few other people were thanked collectively in a single tweet. While I recognised someone else in the list I'd no idea who the sender was or why it had come to me. After searching for any previous conversations we had I realised I'd replied to a tweet that had been RTed into my timeline, and I was now being thanked for doing so.

However the person hadn't sent this tweet, an automated system had. Echofon, which is a mobile Twitter app, tells you what service the person used to send the tweet (most Twitter apps don't) - I could see that this one said 'via Commun.it'.

Tweet management and analytic services like commun.it, SumAll and TweetJukebox do a bit of behind-scenes number crunching and then send auto-tweets from the accounts of people who've signed up saying things like

"Thanks to @Harry, @Hermione and @Ron for the RTs this week (insight by TweetMarketingTool)"

Perhaps my dislike of these tweets is a bit extreme but here are my objections.

It's poorly formatted. If it's meant to be sent to someone then their @name should be first, not in the middle. Presumably this means it's intending to thank people more publicly, which seems self-serving to me. Public thanking has its place (sparingly done) but pinging these out and telling all your followers about someone else's interaction with you seems odd

It isn't sent in reply-to anything in particular (no threading to cue you into a conversation) so puzzled people might have no idea why they're receiving a tweet

Three otherwise-unrelated people are included in the tweet for no obvious reason

It's automated and the person whose account sent it may be unaware that they've thanked a bunch of people - algorithmically-generated gratitude doesn't come across as very genuine

Blocking people who send these tweets is overkill but also ineffective because the tweet hasn't really come from them, but from the Twitter-metric tool. I'd have thought using automated tools to send spam to a number of people would be against Twitter's terms of service but given the volume of these tweets in existence, and the services not being banned yet, I suppose not.

"Automated replies and mentions
The reply and mention functions are intended to make communication between users easier, and automating these processes in order to reach many users is considered an abuse of the feature. If your application creates or facilitates automated reply messages or mentions to many users, the recipients must request or otherwise indicate an intent to be contacted in advance. For example, sending automated replies based on keyword searches is not permitted. Users must also have a clear and easy way to opt-out of receiving automated reply messages and mentions from your application."

Twitter services I've been in touch with commun.it -email info@commun.it and ask them to 'blacklist' you

I had an email exchange with commun.it after I received a couple of 'via Commun.it' tweets in May 2015, and I absolutely failed to make my point with them. They were steadfast in their belief that their product is not spam and that people like receiving automated thank yous and other identikit communications (I'm sure some of them do). My request, that I never wanted to receive another tweet via their system, was met with puzzlement and instead they tried to offer me a free trial of the VIP service. They offered some suggestions on how the wording of the automated tweet might be improved while failing to realise that it was the automatedness that's the problem. Eventually six months later they agreed to blacklist me and I've not received a commun.it spam tweet since September 2015.

TweetJukebox - no info yet on how to opt out

"THANK YOU TWEETS: When a user mentions you, where we come from it is common to "thank" them. Using our Thank You Tweet tool, you automatically thank up to 50 people for their interaction every Friday. Your jukebox system will thank the top Twitter™ users that mentioned you during the week. This feature is automatic, you don't have to do anything. Yes, that's right, more free time. Woohoo!"

It is common, and polite, to thank people but it's a bit impractical to thank everyone that interacts with you on Twitter (and a little bit weird). Weirder still when it's done by a machine.

SumAll - no info yet on how to opt out
Their helpful support person told me that at the moment they're unable to let people opt out from receiving automated mentions. I think that's quite bad but they've at least agreed to pass my suggestion on to their engineers.

paper.li
This creates a sort of newspaper derived from information shared by people on Twitter. You can stop the service from telling you your content's been curated by sending a 'stop mentions' tweet to @newscrier. You can also stop the service from using your content by adding your site by contacting @paper_li.

I don't think many people I know receive the paper.li spam because as soon as the service began sending their tweets out in 2010 there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and the instructions were shared to stop this promptly.

Tweets I'd be happy never to see in my timeline or mentions again
- anything from Storify telling me one of my tweets has been used in it
- any automated tweet thanking me for doing normal interactive things on Twitter
- tweets telling me how well you did on Twitter, even though I like you and am happy things are going well :)

Ideally all of these kinds of tweets would be easier to switch off for users -
presumably you can still get your Twitter insights sent to you, without having to
tweet this information to your followers.

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

My mother once told me that a horse is the only animal you can legally hammer a nail into and ever since then I've been trying to find where that quote came from. Along the way I've come across all sorts of other strange horse-related items and I've decided to keep them together here because I like making unordered* lists. *Numbered for reference only :)

1. Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) adjudications against companies making misleading claims in products sold for horses

ASA Adjudication on Horse Requisites Newmarket Ltdhttp://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/Horse-Requisites-Newmarket-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_202177.aspx
More things to calm horses. "With regard to the design of the study, our expert was concerned that it did not detail the formulation of the active product or placebo and that bias had not been ruled out with regard to the selection of the horses included in the study and that it was entirely possible that the selected horses were of a non-nervous disposition (and therefore not the horses which were likely to be the subject of the ad)."

Ragwort alarmists rapped by Advertising Standards Authority http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2011/07/ragwort-alarmists-rapped-by-advertising-standards-authority/
"Monsanto made false claims that land owners have a legal obligation to control ragwort and prevent it’s spread. There is no such legal obligation. If ragwort becomes a problem in an area and there is a major threat to livestock then a control order can be put in place to require land owners to control the spread but it is not mandatory requirement without the local control order. In fact the government’s own agency the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs make it clear that ragwort is an import native plant for wildlife and especially insects."

2. Getting and using a horse passporthttps://www.gov.uk/horse-passport
All horses (and zebras, ponies and things like that) need to have a horse passport. This document also states whether or not the animal can enter the human food chain at the end of its life which amazed me but Guy Herbert explained that horses are eaten in other countries and so this information needs to be recorded.

"You may also need a diagram of the animal (‘silhouette’)" - it's much less exciting than it sounds (no professional horse silhouettists working by candlelight) and is just marking a bit of paper with generic horse shapes drawn on it.

3. Government documents about horses and ponies etc
The Government is an amazing resource for horse-related matters (as it is for everything, as anything that can be measured will get measured by someone). Search for horses or ponies here if you don't believe me https://www.gov.uk/government/publications

5. Sensible veterinary blog posts etcI'm probably going to keep blanketing my horse - The Near Sidehttp://www.horsechannel.com/the-near-side-blog/2015/0107-im-probably-going-to-keep-blanketing-my-horse.aspx
"You’re reading this blog, which means you’re probably a regular reader of horse-related websites" - well to be honest this has just become truer with time. This post discusses whether or not horses need an extra blanket - "Blanketing is a surprisingly heated issue in the horse world. You would think this is something where the non-blanketers could just quietly laugh at the blanketers who spend a lot of money on horse clothes and then fret all winter about which weight is the right one to use. Alas, that’s not always what happens. People get really inflammatory about blankets, accusing blanketers of messing with nature."

5. Unevidenced alternative health sites (see also 1 above)Horse treatments from Dove Healthhttp://www.donotlink.com/f094
It includes this much-loved picture which seems to imply that a horse is included in the kit.

6. Horse miscellany
The first one is probably the thing that started this whole thing off - it's the Guide Horse Foundation which appear to be no more and whose website has turned into a Japanese site that I don't understand.

Potoooooooo the horsehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooooooo
"Pot-8-Os acquired the strange spelling of his nickname when a stable lad was asked to write it on a feed bin. The lad's version, Potoooooooo, was said to amuse his lordship so he kept it, and it appears in the General Stud Book."

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse." - the evidence that he ever actually said it isn't particularly strong though.

Pegasus road crossing for horse ridershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_crossing
The same as a regular pelican crossing but with an extra raised panel for those on horseback. There's one at Hyde Park Corner but they also have this alarming sculpture nearby in Marble Arch so not the best place for skittish horses. These crossings "are primarily used in the United Kingdom and Peru." Paddington bear could probably confirm this.

Sonic Wonderland: a scientific odyssey of sound, by Trevor Coxhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonic-Wonderland-Scientific-Odyssey-Sound/dp/1847922104
I recommend this great little book on everyday sounds, and some really not that everyday ones. A quote that made me think (particularly about horses) was this one, on the artificially added sounds to silent-engine cars: "Would cars all make the sound of horses’ hooves instead of the newfangled and confusing drone of an internal combustion engine?"

The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery http://www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/info/200064/local_history_and_heritage/1139/the_kings_troop_royal_horse_artillery
The King's Troop moved from St John's Wood to Woolwich in 2012 and brought about 110 dark-haired horses with them. Several times a week the horses are exercised through Blackheath, pooing freely as they go. It is quite a sight to see them trundling past - usually in blocks of about 30 with 10 or so 'triplets' of horses, one rider riding the middle one and a horse reined on either side. Those riders must have some skill. On special days the horses and riders are in full dress and pulling some gun barrels behind them, that makes quite a good sound.

I remember being on a bus on the heath with a man on it ringing in to work to explain he was going to be late "I'm stuck behind some horses...yeah, horses".

Not amusing things about horses
OK these aren't very amusing at all but I'm not going to start a separate post about things about horses that haven't amused me.Newbury horse racing deaths blamed on electrocution http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/9395743.stm
I'm not sure if anyone worked out what was going on here. It was suggested that wet grass above an underground electricity cable (presumably the insulation failed) resulted in two horses dying from electric shock thanks to stray voltage. I don't know enough about it to know if this is plausible but there are other examples of this in the veterinary literature (that's not easy to say!).

London has had a spate of 'pavement explosions' some of which have also apparently been caused by problems with underground cables, leading to fires - I witnessed one of these on Saturday morning. Perhaps electricity is out to get us (and the horses).

Monday, 4 May 2015

Summary
There are two ways in which apparently inert pills could be harmful - (1) by getting in the way of real medicine and (2) turning out not to be inert after all, and one way (3) in which inert pills are harmless to people who didn't need a real medicine in the first place. I hope this post below is clear in explaining this in more depth but let me know in the comments if bits need tightening up, thanks.

Recently an article with the same title as this blog post was published on an alternative health news website which expressed amazement that this could possibly be true.

"The two dominant criticisms made against homeopathic remedies are antithetical to each other. Critics complain that due to a lack of regulation homeopathic remedies are dangerous, but then they turn around and say that homeopathic remedies are simply useless sugar pills with no therapeutic effect whatsoever, and no better than a placebo.

Both can be true. In fact there are two separate ways in which homeopathy can be dangerous and yet still be a harmless placebo, here's how.

(1) Imagine you're in a field and there's a beautiful hand-made wooden gate between the field and the road. Suddenly a bull appears but you can't get this lovely gate open in time and things don't go too well with you bull-wise. The inert and harmless gate has impeded you in getting the help you need.

(2) Imagine you're in the same field, there's no bull this time but on opening the gate you discover that it's been badly made and you get a nasty splinter from using it.

(3) This time you're in the field, there's a nice-looking gate and no bull about but you use the gate with no problems and leave safely.

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this.

In situation (1) you're in peril and need appropriate help. The inertness of homeopathy's sugar pills can't help you here unfortunately. When someone needs appropriate medical attention seeing a homeopath or faffing about with homeopathy pills instead might delay the correct treatment. While many homeopaths are perfectly sensible and work appropriately with medical doctors enough of them don't to cause problems to patients and confusion to the public. There are far too many homeopaths claiming they can help with some serious conditions (asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure) and plenty of them suggesting homeopathy as alternatives to vaccines. It's these homeopaths that have caused skeptics to pay particular attention to homeopathy as a whole.

An absence of treatment (ie empty homeopathy pills) where treatment is actually needed could be dangerous. However an absence of treatment, where none is needed, is not likely to be harmful and as homeopathy contains such highly diluted amounts of substance - if properly prepared - there's unlikely to be anything there that can cause any active harm - this is basically situation (3).

However - and this is important, some 'low potency' homeopathy pills are not diluted as much as people might think, and may still contain some of the active ingredient. It's possible for these, sold over the counter without prescription, to cause people harm and this is situation (2). This testimony to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, USA) from Adriane Fugh‐Berman is worth a read, see in particular the section on 'Safety is not a given'.

Situation (2)also arises where poorer manufacturing processes, or deliberate 'doping' with an active ingredient, results in pills being sold as homeopathy but which actually contain something that shouldn't be there. It is this class of pills which appears to have caused the FDA to sit up and take note. Pills that contain things that they shouldn't (especially if the ingredients aren't properly listed or the risks associated with them explained) could be dangerous and cause active harm to people taking them.

Some Twitter accounts are broadcast-only (they send tweets but there
isn't a person behind the account typing out these tweets) and they're
useful for getting news feeds from various websites and sources.

There are several ways of creating one of these "bots" (Twitter robots, automated accounts) - you don't need to know how to program and you don't need your own server.

Probably
the easiest way to set up such a Twitter account is to use the free
IFTTT service (which stands for 'IF This, Then That'). If a website has
an RSS feed (look for an orange square icon with a radiating white
pattern) then you can use that to set up a system that will ping out a
tweet for you.

You will need

an input, in this case an RSS feed

an output - a spare Twitter account

To make your own Twitter feed based on an RSS feed you can use
an IFTTT recipe that converts RSS feed items into tweets, it's called RSS to Twitter.

The steps are

Create your spare Twitter account and log in

Create an IFTTT account and log in there too

While logged into both IFTTT and Twitter go to https://ifttt.com/twitter
and activate Twitter as a channel (this will be your output) you
probably won't need to activate RSS as a separate channel but just in
case its https://ifttt.com/feed

Here’s what it looks like under the bonnet with the RSS feed as the
‘trigger’ causing the action of sending out a tweet. I’ve added the
hashtag #filmmusic and asked the recipe to publish this along with the
title of the update from Movies in Concert along with the address (Entry
URL) and the first line of the page.

If you click into the lower box it looks like this and you can click on
the blue ‘science flask’ icon to change the options, this will change
what the tweets look like.

Saturday, 2 May 2015

This morning, at a little after 9am, I witnessed a pavement explosion at Blackfriars. I was standing on the Bridge waiting for a bus heading to Elephant & Castle and so looking North to scope out the buses heading towards me.

On the opposite side of the road, on the same side as the entrance to Blackfriars Pier there came a sudden loud bang and a noticeable burst of orange flame leaping upwards. The bus arrived during the explosion (the driver didn't see or hear it as looking in the opposite direction and though it was very loud it probably wouldn't be inside a closed bus cab). I could see part of the orange 'mushroom cloud' receding through the window of the bus.

It wasn't clear precisely where it had come from and I asked the bus driver about it - he got out of his cab and we had a look over but couldn't see any more flames, there was a small amount of grey smoke drifting away but it seemed to be over. My first thought had been a car exploding but they don't tend to 'boom' neatly and then stop (limited experience of car fires but I've seen one in Blackheath and it was billowing black smoke and orange flame). I also thought about the bus explosion during the London bombings (I was in a bus about the same distance away when that happened and remembered a bang and plume of grey smoke behind me, but no flames*).

I tweeted about it then alerted the Police and British Gas via Twitter. While I didn't think it had anything to do with BG (these things apparently are often due to electrical problems) I suppose if you have gas pipes near a fire you might want to know about it!

Since then I've only seen traffic alerts saying that due to a fire in an underground chamber there's only one Northbound lane at Blackfriars and that this is also affecting the East-West lower road below it.

I wanted to add this post as a sort of data point as apparently pavement explosions are a bit more common than I might have thought. At least one of the explosions was caused by an "electrical fault in a link box chamber".

"THE chief executive of the country’s largest electricity network said he
is kept awake at night worrying about the increasing number of pavement
explosions."

*I got off the bus and walked to work in Camden. I'd no idea at the time what had happened but there were worried people leaving Euston (my bus was just by the stop before Euston, not far from the British Medical Association offices where the explosion occurred). At the time we'd heard there were "problems on the underground" with electrical surges.